This document obligates the United State to provide to Israel military assistance worth $38 billion dollars for the next 10 years.
Advertisement
The deal was signed at the US State Department by Israel’s acting National Security Advisor (NSA) Jacob Nagel and Thomas Shannon, US Under Secretary of State.
In recent weeks Washington has toughened its criticism of Israel’s accelerated building of settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, warning that it could destroy hopes for peace with the Palestinians.
Officials from both countries said that while the package constituted the most US military aid ever given to any country, it entails concessions by Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
But in a nod to his differences with Netanyahu, with whom he has clashed over the Iran nuclear deal and Israeli settlement activity, Obama also stressed the importance to Israel’s security of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I want to thank President Obama and his administration for this historic agreement”. The White House insists that the relationship is unbreakable and at the core of United States regional strategy.
I think this can be seen as a gesture of a solidarity with the Israel lobby in the United States, because the Democratic administration and the Republican administration basically when it comes to military aid to Israel it’s usually the same old song over and over again. “As I have emphasised previously, the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realisation of an independent and viable Palestine”.
The new deal will succeed the current $30 billion (over Rs 2.03 lakh crore) deal signed in 2007, which expires at the end of fiscal year 2018.
He said that the deal included the annual payments of 3.3 billion dollars in so-called foreign military financing and 500 million dollars a year for Israeli missile defence funding, the first time this had been formally built into the aid pact.
Netanyahu’s government has nonetheless continued with the policy.
Israeli reports have suggested that he sought up to $4.5 billion per year to maintain his army’s quantitative and qualitative edge over its neighbors, and Netanyahu’s friends in Washington were quick to complain. In the next 10 years, Washington has pledged to provide Israel with 38 billion US dollars in military assistance. Some years, it has even declined, she said.
And, while Israel will now be able to buy more of the latest F-35 fighter jets and CV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor planes from American firms, it has lost a key source of support for its thriving defense industry.
Advertisement
“A phasing-out of a special arrangement that for decades has allowed Israel to use 26.3 per cent of the USA aid on its own defence industry instead of on American-made weapons”.
